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Apple's Home Page Goes On Safari

Leave it to Apple to revamp its own Web site to fit its new attitude on browsers.

The company's current home page sports the virtual look and feel of its Safari Web browser. The steel-hued tabs have been simplified and are more refined than last week's version with a double layer of links that to me seemed to hearken back to the Bondi Blue days.

For those of you PC-brethren with your noses stuck in an IE 7 or Firefox book(mark), Apple released a beta-version of its Safari 3 for Mac and (gasp!) PCs. During Steve Job's keynote at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco Monday, the master showman revived one of the oldest rivalries on the Internet -- the Browser War.

But back to the Web site... ah, yes... that visual statement of one's power and prestige. The search bar is placed high and to the right (like its browser buddy). A drill down to the Mac page highlights a nifty horizontal scroll that runs you through the product lines. The iTunes page allows you to watch a video de jour, while the Support page highlights a tutorial (does anyone not know how to sync an iPod to a computer?). And the iPhone page relies on Apple's new cryptic icons for navigation.

However, if Apple really wanted to show off its HTML prowess and practice what it now preaches to iPhone developers (only Ajax... no OS for you!), it might want to make that home page take on the look and feel of Leopard, not Safari.

Want to enlarge that "Watch the new ads" bug to the forefront? Tired of that "Vroom with a view" statement? Just slide those Spaces around. Or how about a Cover Flow version of the product and download catalogue? Sound good? Then how about a Quick Look version of the browser that lets you get a flavor of a Mac or software like Aperture in action? That would take some engineering, but Apple seems up to the task.

Back to the real browser, though. Hopefully, Apple will learn fast from its expansion outside the Mac OS. Already, David Maynor claims to have found some kinks in Safari's armor.

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